Author Topic: We could be selling .com's and .orgs on a superior decentralised system  (Read 12787 times)

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Offline Empirical1

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Maybe + or * is a better candidate than ! since + and * already have short words ("plus" or "star"), and visually delimit words.


* could be a possibility. Star is certainly a good short word and has a lot of positive connotations. 

Edit: Personally I prefer ! a lot in terms of looks. Can't beat 'Apple!' or 'Apple!com', just need a shorter word for it.
« Last Edit: August 09, 2014, 09:33:33 pm by Empirical1 »

Offline theoretical


RFC 3986 specifies reserved delimiters:

Code: [Select]
      gen-delims  = ":" / "/" / "?" / "#" / "[" / "]" / "@"

      sub-delims  = "!" / "$" / "&" / "'" / "(" / ")"
                  / "*" / "+" / "," / ";" / "="

I guess the idea is to include a reserved delimiter from this list, to have our domain names that deliberately violate RFC 3986 (and hence, will hopefully never exist in legacy DNS).

We need to select a character not used by popular applications.  Off the top of my head:

Code: [Select]
: is used by git, scp, and in proto:// syntax
/ is used in HTTP to indicate paths
? is used in HTTP to indicate query string
# is used to indicate an anchor in web browsers
@ is used by ssh and email

So here are the remaining possible delimiters:

Code: [Select]
[]!$&'()*+,;=

We probably want to stay away from things that might make quoting problematic, and grouping symbols probably won't look right.  Which leaves:

Code: [Select]
!$&*+

Maybe + or * is a better candidate than ! since + and * already have short words ("plus" or "star"), and visually delimit words.
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Offline theoretical


How about inventing or re-purposing a new one-syllable word for the ! used in this context?  Here are some ideas I had:

- Swoosh
- Swish
- Nim
- Bit
- Rex
- Zen
BTS- theoretical / PTS- PZxpdC8RqWsdU3pVJeobZY7JFKVPfNpy5z / BTC- 1NfGejohzoVGffAD1CnCRgo9vApjCU2viY / the delegate formerly known as drltc / Nothing said on these forums is intended to be legally binding / All opinions are my own unless otherwise noted / Take action due to my posts at your own risk

Offline Empirical1

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Ok this is my new ammended idea/concept for marketing this.  Obviously I know we're not really doing any of this, but I like thinking of ideas outside the box, following them through and sharing them, despite knowing very little about how this all works, so apologies for any inaccuracies or if I've misunderstood something basic, and for any distracting from the actual project,  but you never know maybe there's something useful in here.

(I don't know if the green tick idea is do-able or necessary but I know some were worried about copycatting & I got the idea from this post that it might be possible  https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=6778.msg90244#msg90244)

___________________________________________


TDI: The Decentralised Internet by BitShares


The Decentralised Internet, is an entirely new decentralised front end to the internet system that is based on a blockchain, much like Bitcoin.

Where the traditional centralised internet uses .TLD's such as .com & .org , The Decentralised Internet, uses _TLD's such as _com and _p2p and you could even have just a '_', as in apple_ or hotels_ as your web address.
Where the traditional centralised internet is accessed via programs like 'Google Chrome' and 'Internet Explorer', the decentralised internet is accessed via programs like 'BitShares Toast'. ('BitShares Toast' still gives you access to the centralised .TLD sites too, so the best of both worlds really.)

Why use The Decentralised Internet?

On the traditional centralised internet, because of the need to trust a central certificate authority, you can often be the victim of 'man in the middle' attacks and as whistleblowers like Edward Snowden have revealed, your internet actions are often spied on and recorded by 'Big Brother' and others against your will. However the decentralised internet is completely private and secure.

On the traditional centralised internet, sites can also be seized and blocked. However on the decentralised internet, sites can't be blocked or seized. The Turkish government for example, recently blocked, 'Twitter.com', but there would have been nothing they could have done about 'Twitter_com'.
 
How do I get a  _com or a _org?

They are sold via *incentivised auctions, which are started whenever somebody offers the minimum opening bid. (which decreases every month.)

* The next bidder is required to bid at least 10% more than you, and if somebody does bid higher than you, you get half the difference between their bid and yours.

Can anyone bid on and end up buying something like Nike_ or Apple_com?

Yes absolutely! And if you become the owner of apple_com, you can put whatever you like on the site & or sell it later. However only people who can also verify to the blockchain system that they are also the owner of the .com on the centralised internet by the same name will get a green tick next to their site. (To avoid copycatting)

Could these be worth a lot more in the future?

That's for you to decide, but quite frankly we believe the traditional centralised internet is obsolete. What kind of a company wants a site and an online brand that could be blocked or seized at any moment?  Who wants their information spied on all the time? In fact a recent poll showed that over 70% of citizens in many countries felt the current level of spying was 'unacceptable'.

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2014/07/US%20spying.jpg

Besides spying, there's also been significant increases in moves towards internet censorship in many countries all over the world. So it's quite possible that in the near future many people will have switched to using the decentralised internet and many famous businesses may wish to put their brands on it too. Youtube.com obviously wouldn't want to have to call themselves Youtub_com on the internet system of the future would they? So who knows how much a site like Youtube_ or Youtube_com could be worth in a year or two...

Could somebody offer a competing decentralised front end internet system other than TDI that everybody ends up adopting?

Yes, It's possible. But only BitShares has the underlying technology and wide support necessary to launch something like this at the moment. BitShares is also the only group to have delivered a working DAC so far, BitShares X. So a combination of wide support, superior technology and first mover advantage means TDI by BitShares has a very good chance of becoming the decentralised internet system of the future. 

 
« Last Edit: August 11, 2014, 01:21:20 pm by Empirical1 »

Offline Empirical1

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Why don't we just remove the TLD and use the "!" namespace.

Apple!
Google!

:)

 +5%, I think we could sell other TLD's too, but that would be brilliant!   

Offline xeroc

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Offline bytemaster

Why don't we just remove the TLD and use the "!" namespace.

Apple!
Google!

:)
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Offline Empirical1

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Wait I've figured it out ...  :o

The centralised Internet controls .com .org .net , & if we start .p2p,  there's a risk they use .p2p too. But it's not a problem because all they really control is a ' .  '

But you know what's much cooler than a  '.'? A '!' , and they don't control the '!'

So what about, instead of .TLD's, BitShares DNS takes control of  !TLD's?

BitShares!org, Apple!Com, Party!p2p

Now that is an interesting idea. Although one of the nice things about ".com" is that you can pronounce it "dot com". There's not an easy pronunciation of "!com". I've heard ! pronounced as "bang" but I think it would be a stretch to get people to say it that way.  How about "#com"? Could be pronounced "pound" or "hashtag".


Ampersand, perhaps? @ = "at", easy to pronounce

I agree with the pronunciation problem.
I just don't think you can beat the look of a ' ! ' It totally comes across as an improved dot. 
(I would also say @ is already associated with emails and # with things like twitter.)

 
Apple!com looks great!  :D

Offline amatoB

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Wait I've figured it out ...  :o

The centralised Internet controls .com .org .net , & if we start .p2p,  there's a risk they use .p2p too. But it's not a problem because all they really control is a ' .  '

But you know what's much cooler than a  '.'? A '!' , and they don't control the '!'

So what about, instead of .TLD's, BitShares DNS takes control of  !TLD's?

BitShares!org, Apple!Com, Party!p2p

Now that is an interesting idea. Although one of the nice things about ".com" is that you can pronounce it "dot com". There's not an easy pronunciation of "!com". I've heard ! pronounced as "bang" but I think it would be a stretch to get people to say it that way.  How about "#com"? Could be pronounced "pound" or "hashtag".


Ampersand, perhaps? @ = "at", easy to pronounce

Offline bdnoble

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Wait I've figured it out ...  :o

The centralised Internet controls .com .org .net , & if we start .p2p,  there's a risk they use .p2p too. But it's not a problem because all they really control is a ' .  '

But you know what's much cooler than a  '.'? A '!' , and they don't control the '!'

So what about, instead of .TLD's, BitShares DNS takes control of  !TLD's?

BitShares!org, Apple!Com, Party!p2p

Now that is an interesting idea. Although one of the nice things about ".com" is that you can pronounce it "dot com". There's not an easy pronunciation of "!com". I've heard ! pronounced as "bang" but I think it would be a stretch to get people to say it that way.  How about "#com"? Could be pronounced "pound" or "hashtag".
:)

Offline Empirical1

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Wait I've figured it out ...  :o

The centralised Internet controls .com .org .net , & if we start .p2p,  there's a risk they use .p2p too. But it's not a problem because all they really control is a ' .  '

But you know what's much cooler than a  '.'? A '!' , and they don't control the '!'

So what about, instead of .TLD's, BitShares DNS takes control of  !TLD's?

BitShares!org, Apple!Com, Party!p2p
« Last Edit: August 09, 2014, 11:17:15 am by Empirical1 »

Offline Empirical1

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Nobody will use an alternate DNS system if it breaks the *entire rest of the internet*.

Maybe it just seems that way because ICANN is a monopoly system that hasn't had a competitor yet.

What if... ICANN is just a forum.  Web addresses are just people's forum usernames. No-one has a monopoly on usernames.

What did you do when BTSX started?

- You tried to register 'Toast'. Why?
- Out of all the usernames in the world someone had already registered 'Toast' on the very first day.
- How many BTSX would you/others have bid for 'Toast' on BTSX if it was resellable? 
- Why have you/someone else not paid 0.1 BTSX for something like 'Toast1', 'Toast2' or 'Toast.p2p' on BTSX yet?

& while someone may incorrectly send money to Toast on BTSX or get scammed by them, it's very unlikely.
Your reputation is based somewhere else,  and your signature at that location, clearly says  BTSX:  nikolai

So you're saying websites will advertise "go to overstock.com on ICANN" vs "go to overstock.com on BDNS" ??
People don't even know what DNS is, they're not going to be switching their DNS resolver depending on which site they want to visit...


Yes in a sense. Instead of marketing as a 'DNS resolver' I would start

  'The Decentralised Internet'

Which would be empty except for new.com's & .p2p's  (but could still take you to legacy .coms)

At first Overstock.com wouldn't know about it or find value in owning a  'decentralised Internet' username just like it took them a while to offer their customers a 'decentralised money' payment option.

When they did decide to offer their customers the option, they would want to be listed under the same user name 'Overstock' or 'Overstock.com' or have it re-direct to the ICANN overstock.com.
If they didn't get it they would have to put an alternative on their homepage  BDNS: Alittlebitextrastock.com which is why Overstock.com on BitShares DNS is valuable.

I would expect the decentralised Internet to leverage off the existing brands in lots of ways

If someone had a version of Youtube with no adverts, no sorry this can't be played in your country, no sign in to see boobs. I'd expect them to either want to be the decentralised youtube & or youtube.com or re-direct traffic from there.

When I Toast  amazon or amazon.com if it didn't take me to the original I'd be expecting to be re-directed to a decentralised market place or at least be marketed one.

If people we're looking for a decentralised more private facebook which they are they'd Toast 'Facebook' or 'Facebook.com' and then I'd expect them to be re-ridirected to somewhere like Keyhotee. Even better if Keyhotee formatted itself in a way that was very familiar to Facebook users. 'Keyhotee - The decentralised Facebook' . You just get so much leverage marketing & communicating yourself off existing brands people know & understand, like the first thing you mentioned in your snapshot announcement '.bit killer'

I'd expect someone if not twitter themselves to own a some kind of twitter that couldn't be blocked at twitter.com and when turkey blocked twitter.com I'd think twitter.com would also buy domains like Turkey.com or turkey.gov and redirect them to twitter.com just to rub salt in the wound. I.e people would buy & redirect  .com domains as a protest. If you Toasted USA.gov you might get to some kind of protest site.

Occasionally you'd get scams but people would know .coms on the decentralised/blockchain  Internet' are different

Having said that it seems to people my .coms are TOO much like .coms from a technical, legal & association POV even though they'd only be on the decentralised Internet and be orange.


« Last Edit: August 09, 2014, 12:46:57 pm by Empirical1 »

Offline mdw

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To me, BitShares DNS s acting like it invented a browser window with some new complicated TLD system, & added security features and you want to make adoption as seamless as possible (Like chrome vs. some other browser)  but there's no need, unlike crypto, the gateway between the two couldn't be simpler. So to me we're underselling ourselves by not making all .com's and .orgs newly available on a superior system. (At the moment it's like we're sharedropping our most valuable product onto an inferior ICANN.)

How is a DNS resolver supposed to figure out which system's IP address to use? Surely you don't expect the whole world to abandon the existing DNS.


BitShares DNS - 'We're the decentralised orange one'
 
Everyone associates the existing TLD's with a blue colour, when you share them, or when you google/Yahoo them. By making ours Yahoo.com and BitShares DNS being a separate opt in browser everyone will know yahoo.com is not necessarily yahoo.com but there's a lot of value in an exact brand name.

The color displayed for a link is a decision made by the client. Speaking of which, the client isn't always a browser. Would the (alt)dotcoms work for email? Text browsers?


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Offline theoretical


A move to decentralized allocation of .com would be most successful if managed via an "airdrop" to current .com holders, if there was wide industry support.   

"Airdrop to current .com holders" is a technical problem.  I think I have a solution.

For this, I'll refer to "domains," "legacy domains" or "legacy DNS" as the mainstream technology most internet users currently use,
and "cryptomains" as the domains of some DNS replacement cryptocoin technology that attempts to airdrop to legacy
DNS domain owners.

So the goal is to give all (or almost all) legacy domain holders an airdrop of the corresponding cryptomain.  You need two things:
(1) An "inherited set" consisting of some big set of legacy domains, so they can't be registered unless you prove you own the legacy domain.
(2) Some way for current domain holders to prove their ownership and ("claiming your inheritance.")

To seed the inherited set before the genesis block:

- Obtain a list of domain names.  Common crawl [1] seems to be not under NDA, although it's hosted by a proprietary vendor (AWS).
Will probably need prefunding (in USD) to pay for AWS nodes to walk the data and extract domain names.
- Common crawl data is ~100TB, but most of that is content.  Verisign official .com database appears to be about ~2 GB [2].  So the per-node storage requirements for an airdrop to all existing .com domains would be reasonable.
- The base list is called the "crawl set."  This covers domains everybody knows about.  So google, yahoo, facebook, reddit, etc. will surely be included.
  No humans make decisions about what does or doesn't make the cut, and nobody at those companies has to be convinced to do anything special.  Most organizations
  that people actually care about will be included.

After the genesis block, the inherited set can be grown as follows:

- Any registered TITAN account can submit, for free, up to ~8 domains every ~24 hours, which will considered by the network for inclusion.  This makes up the "ping set."
- ~20 randomly selected delegates will ping each domain in the ping-set over ~60-day period by doing a DNS lookup (in legacy DNS) and seeing if it resolves.  We check the signature on the ping,
  and check that the delegate was the one randomly selected by the random process.  But the DNS lookup itself is not audited, because we don't want to DDOS anybody!  We just take the delegate's
  word for whether the domain worked or not.
- If >50% of the pings agree that the domain appears to exist, the domain is moved from the ping set to the launch set.
- Pings are initiated by ordinary users to make sure domains aren't inadvertently excluded.
- We may have a browser extension or DNS proxy, to aid in gathering domain names.
- ~8 months after launch, new pings can no longer be submitted.
- ~10 months after launch, the last pings are resolved and the inherited set is now fixed for eternity.

If you register a cryptomain, the process goes like follows:

- If the cryptomain is not in the inherited set, great!  You got your shiny new cryptomain.
- If you register a cryptomain in the inherited set, the registration will be ineffective until you prove ownership of the legacy domain.
- If your previously registered cryptomain gets at least 5 pings, with >50% success rate, at any point in time, the cryptomain will be suspended until either unsuccessful ping(s) bring the rate
  below 50%, or you prove ownership of the legacy domain.

You can prove ownership of the legacy domain by entering (the hash of) your account's public key in a TXT record in legacy DNS, and using that public key to pay a fee to the network.  ~200
randomly selected delegates check that the TXT record exists and contains the correct key over a ~60 day period.  If at least 20 such checks have been performed with greater than 90% success,
then you have successfully proven ownership of the legacy domain.

So basically:

- Holders of domains that were crawlable at the Common Crawl used to initialize the genesis block will have their domain reserved in the inherited set.
- Holders of domains that got / became popular enough that at least one user submitted them during ~8 months post-genesis will have their domain reserved in the inherited set.
- If you register a new cryptomain during the first ~8 months, you need to control the corresponding legacy domain to ensure the cryptomain won't be suspended.

The owners of ".com" would not want to give up their control and influence for nothing so they would have to be allocated a large stake in the new system.  But getting a government to agree to this is like getting the voting dac adopted by governments.

The beauty of an airdrop is that neither the ICANN administrators, nor the domain holders, need to consent ahead of time.  They're simply given a stake in the system that they can claim at anytime.

[1] http://commoncrawl.org/

[2] http://www.leandomainsearch.com/blog/16-how-to-get-access-to-the-official-verisign--com-zone-file
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Offline toast

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Nobody will use an alternate DNS system if it breaks the *entire rest of the internet*.

Maybe it just seems that way because ICANN is a monopoly system that hasn't had a competitor yet.

What if... ICANN is just a forum.  Web addresses are just people's forum usernames. No-one has a monopoly on usernames.

What did you do when BTSX started?

- You tried to register 'Toast'. Why?
- Out of all the usernames in the world someone had already registered 'Toast' on the very first day.
- How many BTSX would you/others have bid for 'Toast' on BTSX if it was resellable? 
- Why have you/someone else not paid 0.1 BTSX for something like 'Toast1', 'Toast2' or 'Toast.p2p' on BTSX yet?

& while someone may incorrectly send money to Toast on BTSX or get scammed by them, it's very unlikely.
Your reputation is based somewhere else,  and your signature at that location, clearly says  BTSX:  nikolai

So you're saying websites will advertise "go to overstock.com on ICANN" vs "go to overstock.com on BDNS" ??
People don't even know what DNS is, they're not going to be switching their DNS resolver depending on which site they want to visit...
Do not use this post as information for making any important decisions. The only agreements I ever make are informal and non-binding. Take the same precautions as when dealing with a compromised account, scammer, sockpuppet, etc.